Wait a second. Is Marco Rubio — the Marco Rubio whom the tea party swooned over when he won a Senate seat in 2010 — really saying that Washington needs to do more than secure America’s borders? And saying that Congress must allow qualified immigrant workers into the country and let illegal immigrants earn legal residency and eventually citizenship?

Yes, the selfsame Rubio made those comments in the Wall Street Journal last weekend, and the remarks didn’t end the Florida Republican’s political career. In fact, GOP Rep. Paul Ryan, the conservative who anchored his party’s ticket with Mitt Romney, stepped forward to embrace Rubio’s ideas.

Rubio wants to continue building a muscular security presence along the U.S. border and to enforce immigration laws at workplaces. He also would make it easier for highly skilled immigrants and seasonal farmworkers to come here. He would let those living here without proper papers earn a work permit legalizing their status, and then, down the road, citizenship.

The border security leg of his strategy naturally fits with the desires of many Americans, including numerous ranchers along the Rio Grande. So does his pledge to require employers to verify a worker’s legal status. Businesses and farmers will like the idea of making it possible for guest workers to come here.

That fourth leg, the one that would deal realistically with illegal immigrants, is supposedly risky business for Republicans.

That’s why we’re encouraged that Ryan has joined Rubio. We hope that Texas’ two senators, Republicans John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, will recognize that lawmakers can touch a hot rail, just as Rubio did, and live to see the next day.

More than that, we hope they come to share his view that “it’s not good for the country to have people permanently trapped in that status where they can’t become citizens.”

Cornyn has certainly talked about overhauling immigration laws, but, going back to George W. Bush’s attempts to modernize them, Cornyn has not embraced all parts of the overhaul America needs.

Cruz, of course, is new to Washington. Like Rubio, he’s a Latino from a state with many immigrants, and he courted the tea party assiduously during his 2012 election. We hope the Texan is now watching how a legislator with a similar profile is trying to solve a major problem for the country and our state.

President Barack Obama also needs to engage Rubio with a spirit of compromise. The Democrat wants illegal immigrants to earn citizenship, too, but he probably wants them to earn it over a shorter period than Rubio does. The length of that process should not be what kills an immigration deal.

Rubio is combining toughness with fairness and practicality. In doing so, the conservative Republican is showing how America can step out of its immigration quandary.

Path to legalization

“Here’s how I envision it. They would have to come forward. They would have to undergo a background check. They would be fingerprinted. They would have to pay a fine, pay back taxes, maybe even do community service. They would have to prove they’ve been here for an extended period of time. They understand some English and are assimilated. Then most of them would get legal status and be allowed to stay in the country.”

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